Showtime
by Kage Koutetsu Yume
Summary: John teaches Vriska how to play piano.


**Showtime**

Vriska had always loved the noises made by the human double-clef music-making keyboard(or piano as John called it) when John played it. It was something about the way his fingers danced about the instrument and how they could go from heavy and dark to a spritely little tune. The very sounds of it seemed to reflect the dance of John's hands. At least if they were both dead, they could both enjoy the music that vibrated through the dream bubble.

Sitting on the bench together as the last notes echoed was one of Vriska's favorite things about d8ing John.

As John removed his hands from the piano, Vriska placed her fingers in an approximation of the last chord and pressed down. Instead of a solemn minor, however, she got a jumble of notes with only dissonance in common. She winced with her hands still on the keyboard.

"Haha, that was close, Vriska, but a few of your fingers are a little off!" John said as he reached to correct her fingers. She pressed her fingers down again, and this time it made the same solemn ending chord that John had made a minute ago. She smiled and pressed down again, making the same chord.

"How does that even work, anyway? You moved like two of my fingers and it went from trash to awesome," Vriska inquired, her fingers still on the piano. She looked at her fingers and tried to memorize where they were.

"Oh, it's easy! There's a bunch of theory stuff involved, but mostly it's kinda intuitive. I could teach you if you want. Actually, you might like piano! There are eight notes in a scale, and I could be wrong, but I have a feeling you might like the number 8. It's just a hunch though, I could be wrong," John smirked as he mentioned the number 8. No one else in the dream bubbles played instruments. The Daves played the turntables, but that wasn't quite the same as the organic feeling of a piano or violin.

It would be nice to have someone to play a duet with.

"Eight, you say?" Vriska smirked back at him, suddenly a lot more interested in this musical instrument.

"Why yes, eight. Here, we gotta scoot to Middle C, I'll show you how it's done..." John said as he started to scoot the bench to the right. Vriska stood a little to make it easier.

"Alright, now this note here is Middle C, but we'll get back to that later. All notes before the two black keys are C..."

With that, the lessons began. Whenever they would have a d8 that involved John playing a song for her, another lesson would happen. Since she was learning piano, Vriska found that bell percussion had opened up to her as well. John told her stories of messing around in school with the vibes after band when he was bored, though in band he played the clarinet. He had been one of the few non-percussionists who was allowed to touch the percussion.

All was well in the dream bubbles. D8s happened, Vriska was progressing well at piano, and according to some other ghosts, their ancestors were in these bubbles too somewhere.

Even so, matespritship started to get dull, and then full of strife. Vriska and John started to have disagreements, and with that, the lessons began to taper off. That was a definite downside to their disagreements. Vriska really enjoyed piano. It was even giving her a taste for the number 4, since constant octaves made for dull songs. Plus, if she was doing fourths in both hands it added up to eight so it worked out.

Then the 8r8k up happened.

It was during a lesson.

"No, Vriska, that's not how the song goes. You can't just put fourths in there and expect it to work out." John said with exasperation. Her affinity for fourths was making the chords become dissonant.

"Well maybe I'm making it better with the conflict between the fourths and fifths. Did you ever think of that?" Vriska snapped. She was just trying to have a little fun! The song was boring and she wanted to learn another song.

"Okay I admit it's not the best writing but this is one of my favorite songs to play and I really don't appreciate you messing it up." John said. Okay, it wasn't even one of his favorites, but it was the last song he played before he entered The Medium and Rose broke his piano. It was also a song his dad had frequently played. It was important.

"Or maybe you just don't appreciate my creativity," Vriska was getting really fed up with John.

"No. I'm not going to get into another argument like this with you. We're finished." John stood up as he said this and walked away, leaving Vriska at the piano.

She hadn't expected him to be the one to finish it.

After a few moments and he was already gone, she began to blow up, "WELL FINE, LEAVE ME JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE HAS! I DON'T NEED YOU! AND I DON'T NEED YOU TO TEACH ME PIANO EITHER!"

Blue tears began to well up after she was done shouting. She had always expected that John wouldn't have the guts to break up with her. After all, she had been the one to make him ascend to greatness.

But wait. He didn't know that. This one died because of Terezi, long before Vriska started to really talk to and help him.

Although it was awkward at first, they became friends again after the break up. Sort of. They both knew better than to try again, at any rate.

It was nice. It was ok.

But then he died. No one expected that ghosts could be killed.

Of course, when they found that out, he was already here.

Vriska looked down at the sticks in her hands as Aranea had to take an interfishin while Meenah went to pee. It was cute how her dancestor tried to be relevant, putting on a pirate dress and giving exposition. Still, the piano style of the vibraphone made Vriska a little sad. She didn't show it, obviously, but she didn't hit the keys with as much gusto as she normally would. Still, she kept a smile on her face.

After all, at least she could keep playing in his memory.


End file.
